Prubangboy

And you admire yourself as a passive-aggressive, wet blanket drip actually bothering to pooh-pooh a medium-funny joke.

Since I love you Bob, please consider packing along some kind of face-shield for when these Batman-like, crime-fixing fits overtake you.

1 minute ago, bob smith said:

so he should be slapped around for trying to do the right thing?

 

 

 

Most def. 100%.

I was in sales. Interrupting someone's pitch is a grave sin.

Do you c-block Jehovah's Witnesses when they're door-stepping and start yelling that there is no Jesus too?

1 minute ago, OneMoreFarang said:

 

Most of the time there are no big differences between us.  

Do you find that you escape classism by living in Thailand? I def do.

We're talking about some of the most penniless and abused workers in Thailand -who are forced to wheedle and extort chump change just so they can clear 500 baht in a day. A day that is spent out in the heat, breathing in traffic fumes. 

Grab cab rendered them obsolete. The electric tuk tuk that costs the same as a cab is doing them no favors. 

Relatedly, I once saw a Brit (of course) actually interrupt some taxi negotiations between two Swedish sweeties (of course) and advise them to demand to pay less.

Another driver came over, gave him a shove and said, "thai boxing". And then sadly, everyone dispersed. Am I what Trump calls a race-traitor for hoping for a zesty slap around of the Brit?

Bob, while I normally view you as font of Buddha-like equanimity, you are flat-out out of your mind to be dissing and arguing with penniless tuk tuk drivers (who are undoubtedly more fit than you).

Plus, other nearby tuk tuk drivers will be happy to join in on your kicking. They're hopped up on M-80 energy drinks -never forget that.

Painfully honest article in The Guardian about how wealth inequality strains friendships. Interesting: 88% of Millenials will go into debt after spending time with richer friends. The FOMO is strong.

I am the most set up of all the people I know. One thing I learned, is that poor people don't want to hear my fake humility or protestations of thrift.

I changed careers from a $1,000 suit job to a $200 suit job. I knew not to wear the old suits, but I couldn't resist keeping the $200 ties. So I was back to square one. I was still clearly monied. It oozed out of every posh pore of me. Likewise, when I was rich, my humble beginnings were always present.

What's your favorite rich person faux-humility gesture? What's your favorite poor nouvelle rich over-reach?

Do you have richer/poorer friends? How does wealth inequality affect your relationships with Thai people?

I pretested this thread with NextG. He had this to say:

"Whether I haver richer, poorer, or indeed ANY friends, is neither here nor there. Why are you assuming? The witness protection program I'm in doesn't allow me to say anything. Are you trying to get my credit card number?"

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/nov/12/is-the-wealth-gap-ruining-friendships

NextG:

"Why do people think stuff about me I already said about myself?"

"Why do people hold commonly held opinions that most people hold -what about in the rare instances where that might not be true?" 

'Why doesn't anyone ever listen to me, beyond the fact that I never say anything, just endlessly bat back what someone else said?".

They pay to be there, so they want more money from you. I mean, duh. Possibly even super-duh.

Note to Bob: please never open the mini-bar fridge. They want money for that Toberone bar. Like, a lot.

11 hours ago, NHBOB said:

 

Moderator, you could probably close this thread now.

 

"Thank you, Sir. We'll get right on it".

Archie had two good albums and then got drafted. Here's his other one you'll be humming all day

Quite the iconoclast for not picking Glen Gould.  I like Keith Jarret.

Relatedly, The New York Dolls covered Archie Bell's There's Gonna Be A Showdown and Bruce Willis said Tighten Up was his all time fave Soul record.

8 minutes ago, NHBOB said:

 I'm going to stay right outside Thapae gate for a week.  Maybe I'll drive, maybe I'll bike, walk, take cabs and the red truck.

 

 

That's more of a Chiang Mai vacation than a research trip, but very solid for Grab cabs arriving in under 2 minutes.

Pop into Chiang Mai hummus 2 minutes away. I eat there monthly. 2 other must-do's nearby are Stephano's Italian and Swan Burmese,

6 minutes ago, JimTripper said:

i started thinking is this it, what now?

 

unless i started a family or got married, 

Agreed. If I were unmarried, I'd be in Pattaya or Bangkok; possibly Phuket.

CM is too small when your principal means of entertainment is just yourself.

A free floating atomic particle will want to gravitate to where the other at-loose particles are. That aint Chiang Mai.

37 minutes ago, novacova said:

weather/smoke conditions changes during the year.

 

Many expats really can’t handle the smoke conditions and leave during that period.

It's also maddeningly unpredictable as to how bad and when it's going to be.

I'm booking March/April away, but this year most of May was bad too. Cha Am is my likely late spring smoke dodge of choice.

Chiang Mai requires that you:

1) have a life where you can/don't mind having that kind of open-ended gypsy lifestyle.

2) really love Chiang Mai at the level of likewise impossible places like Venice or Amsterdam to put up with it.

-It also helps if you enjoy living in a place with a lot of tourists, seeing people right off the plane breathing deep of their first-hour in town bliss.

No one is walking around in Nimman with a long face. Most people on the street next to you are having one of the best days of their lives.

CHUM really shows how capricious restaurant reputation is. It kills Ginger Kitchen, it has a superb location in a pretty space  -but Ginger Kitchen gets the YouTubes.

Ging Grai a few blocks up is the best Thai food I ever ate -and they do all Thai regions with a very light on the oil touch. At dinner hour, they might fill a third up.

I think a lot of the CM Youtube foodie v-blogs are 1) very lazy and going to the same 6 places  2) out of date.

Vegan dining is a super-specialty here. You only see GoodSouls represented on Youtube. I love that place and its many pricey offshoots, but there are at least half a dozen vegan places in CM that would also be Time Out 5*'s anywhere else in the world.

I love CM to death and am the kind of guy who wiki-reads about a bunch of temples, sees them all,  and might book a cooking class (I mean, in days gone by). But if I'm a tourist here, I'd be hard-pressed to fill 5 full days, even with some heavy padding from elephants and white water rafting.

As local, I found my rah-rah plans to eat at all the riverside restaurants were undone by how samey they all were. We get a lot of mental health from looking at Doi Suthep; we have yet to set foot on Doi Suthep.

CM is a great place to eat Khao Soi noodles. Only a tourist will get in a cab to eat legendary ones over the ones on hand 10 feet away. On my block, there are 3 B+ purveyors of KSN, and then Instagram legend-Nimman Khao Soi 2 blocks further.

I'd rather watch KSN noodles being eaten across town by Mark Weins than get in a cab to eat them myself. And that cab ride would cost more than the noodles.

Living here, your world is your nabe. That's why a low traffic nabe really improves your quality of life. 

2 minutes ago, ChaiyaTH said:

Because one area is not the same as another, you want to see if you can live somewhere, that includes sleeping breakfast, lunch, dinner. So moving hotels is smart.

Agreed. Every 7/11 and whitie breakfast outlet has its own unique vibe. You couldn't pull me off of my corner now. I booked into soi 11 and eventually migrated all the way to soi 17.

Hotel changing is down to temperment. I had a great solo week in BKK pinging and ponging to a diff nabe and hotel daily. Whereas my wife demands a 4 night stay MINIMUM anywhere we go.

"if I want any more Sh from you, I'll squeeze your head"

-suposedly said by Barbra Streisand.

1 minute ago, ChaiyaTH said:

a week is not close to enough, and your question is unrealistic too. 

How long is enough, tho?

Call it 2 nights each in OC/Nimman/Fill in the blank actively looking around with a driver and you would have seen a lot of CM and a lot of it twice.

When I was sussing areas in Bangkok, 2-3 nights would do it, at least to veto it from further research.

Just now, bignok said:

No need for rants on Fang.

I read here that Fang aint what it used to be. So what is it now, a single shack?

Back in the day, Fang took over from Mae Hong Son as edge of the ledge of the world-status in Thailand among the Lonely Planet crowd.

I see the saintly King above me has recco'd The Smith Residence. I concur. Truly an island of lost, wayward boys. My stay there was my fun-est in CM to date.

Caveat: Angry American Boomers are CM-local's absolute least favorite whities. So maybe go somewhere else so as not to kill the vibe.

Lanna Moon Condo down by the Night Market is my fave cheapie: a thou a week. Brutal mattresses, tho, spring for a mattress topper.

And it has a pool. And a shared kitchen (10 baht per propane use). You can't book it; just show up and they'll call the landlord.

1 minute ago, Lacessit said:

If you were bored with Chiang Rai after 4 days, you simply did not get out enough.

 

 

True. I find downtown CR a fair bit less attractive than CM, but a mile out, it's the dead-same for a third off. 

Just like CM gets the more educated and adventurous tourists than Phuket, CR is a yet further filter still. You have to really love the North as a repeat visitor or have a lot of travel time to put CR on your list.

To live there, you're probably a CM transplant. Moving directly to CR is prob less likely than hopping off of the plane and heading straight to Ubon.

That little Nimman grid of streets that you keep referencing is indeed a uniquely walkable, low-traffic area in CM. I live within hopping distance of Charin Pie on your map (where they will put your pic onto your latte foam).

But once you leave it, you're abutted by high traffic streets. I was on the Maya Mall side of Nimman Road, it was much less attractive for a pedestrian. I paid off a lease to move to the good side.

Medium traffic is what makes the Old City so great (and so hard to rent in).

The area between Tapie Road And Loy Koh Road is another uniquely walkable area of Chiang Mai where you have that mix of quietude and access to good restaurants. 'Can't think of a third of any size that's centrally located (Night Market?).

This is the typical layout of a developing nation's historic towns: they have a traffic-calmed downtown, an expat area adjacent to it, and then the mall out on the main road leading in. I had this problem living in Mexico City; it was leafy and quaint for 6 blocks and then I had to cross eight lanes of traffic.